BOC: Mirrors & OFF: Porcupine Tree

[Jon Jarrett]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, Stephan Forstner wrote:

> > ...if nothing else,
> > Mirrors would present an opportunity for everyone to hear The
> > Devil's Hangnail, which is the original song that metamorphosed
> > into The Vigil and had some nasty Patti Smith lyrics.
>
> Although I can somewhat understand it, I have to put up a (small) protest to
> the slagging Mirrors occasionally takes here. Sure, it's got its share of
> dogs (Dr. Music) and somewhat boring stuff (Moon Crazy, Lonely Teardrops),
> but The Great Sun Jester is definitely one of my all-time favorite BOC
> pieces, The Vigil is likewise great, I am the Storm is pretty good, and I
> really like In Thee, which I take at face value as a completely non-ironic
> statement and love it for both its sentiment and its presentation.
> Admittedly the album is a very mixed bag, but the good tracks here are
> really good, in several different ways. Maybe the fact that they seem to be
> all over the place turns people off? Or is it that this was too 'pop'-py an
> album?

        Now, I have to differ marginally here. I really do have problems
with the way _Mirrors_ sounds, but there are I agree some songs which are
worth having it for, indeed `The Vigil' is pretty life-enhancing. However,
I really don't get on with `The Great Sun Jester', which strikes me as
mawkish, uninspired and over-long (though the Nikwind spoken word version
is much *much* worse) but I do like `Dr. Music'. The lyrics, man. the
lyrics, it's Meltzer at his S&M finest--well, maybe not finest, but
they're pretty good for what the song is. The song is of course a pop
number but hey. It's a pop album, in production at least. I also like `I
Am The Storm' though I wish it had been on _Spectres_ where the production
of that one would have suited it better--I'd swap it for `Fireworks' I
think... My problem with it is this mostly the production, but also the
other songs on it, which are quite often only rivalled by `Debbie Denise'
and `Make Love Not War' for BOC-discount-store schlock. I'd still rather
give up at least two other BOC albums before _Mirrors_.

> > As for rejected songs being lesser than songs that make an album, that
> > is not always the case.  There are any number of reasons a song
> > might be dropped from an album.  Sometimes the song just doesn't
> > quite fit in with the rest of the songs...so no matter how good it
> > is, it gets cut.  This happened fairly frequently with Jethro Tull,
> > for instance...
>
> As was amply demonstrated with the fantastic 20 Year (5 LP/3 CD) boxed set
> that collected lots of these 'extra' tracks, and, to a much lesser extent,
> disc 2 of Nightcap. Many of those unreleased songs were really good, as good
> as the prviously released 'official' material, in some cases even better. I
> think though that some cleanup and additions were done for some of those
> tracks before they were let out for the boxed set. Incidently, the BBC DJ
> who appears doing voiceover on some of the early live tracks collected for
> the JT 20 year set (Brian Matthews) can also be heard on the 2 Hawkwind
> tracks from the BBC transcription disc (collected on the Dawn of Hawkwind boot).

        This is it. I don't think you could ever have put `Mommy' on
_Secret Treaties_ except as an extra of some sort, it's so completely out
of kilter with the general tone of the rest of the album. Porcupine Tree
had ten or twelve tracks from the vaults which had just never fitted with
the rest of an album's pieces which were going on that Delerium
retrospective collection. Since Delerium's website, having been inactive
for a year and a half, is now off the ether, I assume the label itself is
also finally folded? So I guess it will be a while before we hear that
stuff. Yours,
              Jon

--
           Jon Jarrett                     "Two men say they're Jesus,
          (01223 514989)                   One of 'em must be wrong..."
   jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk              (Mark Knopfler)